When I am truly present, I feel each experience within my body. I receive it with my breath. I prod it with my thoughts and explore it with my feelings. Then, as I peel away these aspects of experience, these many layers of me, my inner wisdom welcomes that experience, absorbing it like a sponge, until that experience becomes me.
When the layers dissolve, all that I experience is me.
Brave hearts do not express courage with reckless abandon, fearlessly, wildly lunging forward. Rather, with discipline, wisdom, and awareness they intentionally explore a space that feels unfamiliar, unsafe, and with trust in themselves they willingly go there anyway.
How quick I am to judge, to impose my needs and perspective on others.
I see what I label as short-comings, inadequacies, and things I want to change in them.
Oh, life is such a magnificent mirror.
When I look to change others, I am seeing in that mirror all that I wish to change in me.
But I forget that what I see is simply a reflection.
Perhaps instead of looking at what needs to change, I can see all the beauty that lies within them and in me, all the gifts, all the talents, all the goodness, just as they are.
If all I see in that mirror is the goodness, then that is all that there will be.
Meek is not to be cowardly, rather it is gentle, patient, non-violent, and creates a soft space from which your power emerges in its most natural form – one of compassion, vision, abundance, and joy. Be meek.
As the sun rises, it is not our task to seek what is missing but to marvel in all that is there.
Lonely or peaceful…longing or inviting…isolated or surrounded…empty or full?
It’s all in the lens you select.
My body is the vessel of my being.
It holds me, carries me, represents and protects me.
Why do I judge it, harm it, ignore it?
My body has unconditional love for me, always doing its best to support whatever next idea I have about how to decorate it, what to put into it, how to use it.
It will not last forever and it may not always be able to do or give me what I want, but in the still of the night, no matter what I ask of it, if I listen very carefully, I can hear it saying, “I love you”…every organ, every bone, every muscle, every cell.
It’s time to love it back…unconditionally.
Can I ask “How are you?” for the sake of simply caring?
Can I learn of your pain, your mistakes, your successes, without judging?
Can I know that your different opinions, ideas, and ways of doing things are exquisite because they are you?
Can I trust that all of your decisions are yours, not good or bad, but those necessary to lead you along the path that is you?
Can I resist the urge to selfishly invade your experience just to feel more powerful from the distant shores of my perceptions?
Can I love and respect you enough to allow you to mind your own business?
Can we all just live freely and in peace to exist in the space of our own decisions, to learn and grow in our own unique ways, and just go to work at the task of being what we were made to be…our own selves?
See the light…
Feel the light…
Be the light…
The natural, blissful, abundant, light that is YOU!
There is no need to do or be anything else.
Sitting in stillness…waves come crashing in…loud, powerful, ferocious. Yet, in the stillness, I know only their beauty, their strength, and their humble gifts of positive change.
Monday Mindfulness 